In the other direction, upon this side the brook, the road is lost to view among the trees; but if I were to follow the windings upon the hillside, it would bring me shortly upon the old home of my grandfather; there is no pleasure in wandering there now. The woods that sheltered it from the northern winds are cut down; the tall cherries that made the yard one leafy bower are dead. The cornice is straggling from the eaves; the porch has fallen; the stone chimney is yawning with wide gaps. Within, it is even worse; the floors sway upon the mouldering beams; the doors all sag from their hinges; the rude frescos upon the parlor wall are peeling off; all is going to decay—And my grandfather sleeps in a little graveyard by the garden wall.
A lane branches from the country road, within a few yards of me, and leads back, along the edge of the meadow, to the homely cottage, which has been my special care. Its gray porch and chimney are thrown into rich relief by a grove of oaks that skirts the hill behind it; and the doves are flying uneasily about the open doors of the granary and barns. The morning sun shines pleasantly on the gray group of buildings; and the lowing of the cows, not yet driven afield, adds to the charming homeliness of the scene. But alas for the poor azaleas, and laurels, and vines that I had put out upon the little knoll before the cottage door—they are all of them trodden down: only one poor creeper hangs its loose tresses to the lattice, all disheveled and forlorn!
This by-lane which opens upon my farmhouse, leaves the road in the middle of a grove of oaks; the brown gate swings upon an oak tree—the brown gate closes upon an oak tree. There is a rustic seat, built between two veteran trees that rise from a little hillock near by. Half a century ago there was a rustic seat on the same hillock—between the same veteran trees. I can trace marks of the old blotches upon the bark, and the scars of the nails upon the scathed trunks. Time and time again it has been renewed. This, the last, was built by my own hands—a cheerful and a holy duty.
Sixty years ago, they tell me, my grandfather used to loiter here with his gun, while his hounds lay around under the scattered oaks. Now he sleeps, as I said, in the little graveyard yonder, where I can see one or two white tablets glimmering through the foliage. I never knew him; he died, as the brown stone table says, aged twenty-six. Yesterday I climbed the wall that skirts the yard, and plucked a flower from his tomb. I take out now from my pocket-book that flower—a frail, first-blooming violet—and write upon the slip of paper, into which I have thrust its delicate stem—“From my grandfather’s tomb—1850.”
But other feet have trod upon this knoll—far more dear to me. The old neighbors have sometimes told me how they have seen, forty years ago, two rosy-faced girls idling on this spot, under the shade, and gathering acorns, and making oak-leaved garlands for their foreheads—Alas, alas, the garlands they wear now are not earthly garlands!
Upon that spot, and upon that rustic seat, I am lying this May morning. I have placed my gun against a tree; my shot-pouch I have hung upon a broken limb. I have thrown my feet upon the bench, and lean against one of the gnarled oaks, between which the seat is built. My hat is off; my book and paper are beside me; and my pencil trembles in my fingers as I catch sight of those white marble tablets gleaming through the trees, from the height above me, like beckoning angel faces. If they were alive! two more near and dear friends, in a world where we count friends by units.
It is morning—a bright spring morning under the oaks—these loved oaks of a once cherished home. Last night I slept in yonder mansion, under the elms. The cattle going to the pasture are drinking in the pool by the bridge; the boy who drives them is making his shrill halloo echo against the hills. The sun has risen fairly over the eastern heights, and shines brightly upon the meadow-land and brightly upon a bend of the brook below me. The birds—the blue-birds sweetest and noisiest of all—are singing over me in the branches. A woodpecker is hammering at a dry limb aloft; and Carlo pricks up his ears, and looks at me—then stretches out his head upon his paws in a warm bit of the sunshine—and sleeps.
Morning brings back to me the past; and the past brings up not only its actualities, not only its events and memories, but—stranger still—what might have been. Every little circumstance which dawns on the awakened memory is traced not only to its actual, but to its possible issues.
What a wide world that makes of the past! a great and gorgeous—a rich and holy world! Your fancy fills it up artist-like; the darkness is mellowed off into soft shades; the bright spots are veiled in the sweet atmosphere of distance; and fancy and memory together make up a rich dreamland of the past.
And now, as I go on to trace upon paper some of the visions that float across that dreamland of the morning—I will not—I can not say how much comes fancywise, and how much from this vaulting memory. Of this, the kind reader shall himself be judge.